The Long War
by fasbran2
Summary: Follow the story of five UNSC service members and the people around them as they do their very best to survive the Human Covenant War all the way from the Battle of Harvest to Reach and beyond.
1. Introductions I

**November 2, 2525, Babylon City, New Babylon**

A rainbow colored Capri drove through the rain soaked street as I looked out the window.

 _Finally_ , I thought _. Just one more thing and my first mission will finally be complete, three months, three fucking months and it's finally over, I actu…_

I was brought back to reality by the sound of Phillip's snapping fingers and smooth voice.

"Hey Shani, you okay?" He said as I looked at his pale face.

"Yeah, sorry, must have zoned out a bit" I answered, no wonder, I've been up for the last two days getting everything I needed, that coupled with the sound of the rain outside wasn't helping

"Understatement of the century" Came the sarcastic reply from Jason, oh yeah, having to stand him wasn't helping either.

"It's a self-defense mechanism against your stupidity" I said, staring daggers at him.

That drew a round of chuckles from the table, it was a stupid comeback, but we were too tired to care about that.

The three of us, plus Carla, who was ignoring us in favor of staring intently at her datapad, were seated along a circular wooden table at a dimly lit room in the second story of an old biocrete building in the southern edge of Babylon City.

There was a map of the city with various notes and drawings on it sitting on top of the table.

"Anyway, let's go over the plan one more time then try and then get some rest" Phillip's voice echoed over the room as he started going over all the details again.

"Group a will detonate a firebomb inside the registrations office at 1100 hours, then, at 1200 groups B and C will start a firefight with the police at the third avenue in the north and we'll relocate to the Ritz-Carlton by the Highway, at about 1300 the convoy will pass through our location, groups D and E will ambush it then we'll get the cargo, load it up our truck and get to the pickup area here" he said pointing his finger at the map.

"Everybody got it?"

I got up as a round of affirmatives came from the table.

"I'm gonna take a smoke break, be back soon"

"Be careful sweetie!" Jason said as I walked of the room.

I flipped him off before closing the door and heading downstairs

"Good morning!" I was greeted enthusiastically by Dona, who was sipping some coffee by the sofa on the first floor while reading a book.

"Morning" I mumbled as I got out of the building.

The rain started hitting my all black rain jacket as I walked through the other side of the street, I could see my purple hair and red eyes reflected of a puddle of water.

I got to the end of the street, found the nearest trash, took the cigarette pack out of my pocket, pulled out a cigarette, flipped it and put it back in the pack.

 _Should I look? It'd be more badass if I didn't, fuck it, I'm looking_ I though as I discarded the now incinerating cigarette pack and turned around to face the building I just came from.

Then it blew it up.

As the fire started spewing out of the windows a chocolate truck stopped in front of me and opened a secret door, a hand extended toward me and I took it.

I thanked the ONI agent as he helped me into the inside of the truck, I then took a data crystal containing everything I'd seen, heard or read during the last three months, plus additional commentary, out of my neural uplink and handed it to him.

The inside of the truck was dark, hiding all the details except for the gun rack in the wall and the lights from the consoles at the aft of the truck, also at the end of the truck was a rotating chair with its back to us.

It turned to reveal the mustachioed face of a thirty something blond man.

"Marvelous work Lieutenant Kira!" Alex exclaimed, he was the officer in charge of our Section II intel gathering unit, called blue division, it was composed of twenty agents plus support teams.

"The local police will be taking over for now"

"Wait what, we aren't going to finish our own operation?" I said, disappointed that we would be missing the best part, catching the insurrectionists with their pants down.

"I'm afraid not, we've been recalled to Reach, apparently there's something big going down in an outer colony called Harvest"

"Fine" I sighted "Do we have any idea what's happening?"

"We're ONI dear, we never have any idea what's happening"

 _Shit_

 **November 3, 2525, Jotunheim's Atmosphere.**

"Everybody get ready, ETA to touchdown is two minutes" Came the voice from Sarah, the Pelican's Co-Pilot, over the blood tray's speakers.

"Hey miss, where's my peanuts?" Ryan shouted at the cabin.

The Pelican suddenly did a barrel roll and Ryan hit his head on his seat's safety railing.

"Oh I'm sorry, where did this turbulence come from, could you repeat what you just said private" Sarah replied sardonically.

"Nothing ma'am, I'm sorry ma'am!" Ryan replied quickly while massaging his forehead.

A round of chuckles echoed throughout the troop bay.

"Ok marines, suit up and prepare to drop, Ryan and Cyril, you're in the lead, Jonah and Ruth in the back, everybody else with me" Sergeant Pamela shouted as she got up from her seat.

I checked my BR55 one last time, followed by my MA5B, M6C and M636 sticky detonator courtesy of Jotunheim's main armory, not that they knew.

A vibration rumbled throughout the Pelican as it touched down.

"Here we go ladies and gentleman" Pam said as the bay doors started lowering.

Suddenly the bay was flooded by the frigid air of Jotunheim's surface, I could feel the heat seeping out of my body.

 _So much for temperature control_

We got up from our seats and one by one the twelve of us got out of the pelican, I took a step of the pelican's ramp and…

Fell down into the ground as my foot sank at least half a meter into the snow, at least the snow softened up my landing.

"Well that's a hard landing" Cyril joked

"Oh god shut up!"Came the reply from Dina, the squad's medic.

"Yeah seriously Cyril, your jokes suck" added Pam.

The bickering continued as I got up, we must have been on the middle of a snowstorm because you couldn't see a meter in front of you, fortunately we had a tag in our HUD showing us where the entrance to the enemy base was.

Section II apparently had gotten Intel on this secret base in Jotunheim's surface from an anonymous source, most likely an employee at one of the Megacorps that formed the illusive syndicate we we're about to attack, those assholes have spent over a century trying to overthrow the UEG and take control of human space, because of course they did, like the insurrectionists weren't enough.

And now here we were, freezing our asses off hundreds of kilometers of from the nearest city, oh, did I mention that all the cities on the planet were inside gigantic caves because the surface was too cold to live in? Because of course they were.

We kept walking at a snail's pace for half an hour before we got to the marker.

"Sooo… Where's the entrance?" Dina asked.

"It's supposed to be here" Cyril answered.

"Oh really Cyril, I didn't know that, how insightful of you" Dina deadpanned.

"Ok you know what…"

I stopped paying attention to the conversation and started inspecting the area looking for an entrance.

Then I fell down again.

Thankfully I was wearing a sealed helmet, because this time the ground was solid, I could feel a heavy fabric falling over my body.

"Did not expect that" Pam said as I got up, apparently I had just tripped on the camouflage netting that was hiding the entrance to the base.

"It was actually pretty obvious in hindsight" Corporal Lana said.

"Cyril, check the door" Pam told the squad tech.

"You think we're going to have to blow it open" Zhang the squad explosives expert said excitedly as Cyril started inspecting the blast door.

"No need, it's a standard Ultor blast door" Cyril said "Just need to input the UNSC master key"

"You'd think they would bother making a custom door for their super-secret base" Ryan asked.

"Why, why would they possibly do that? It's a secret base genius, if we know where it is then it doesn't matter what kind of door they have" I answered

"You don't need to be an ass about it" He replied with mock sadness in his voice

"Yes I do"

Cyril connected his datapad to the blast door exterior access port and started tapping on it.

"Okay, Ryan you're on front, everybody else, prepare for hostile contact" Pam said as she crouched next to Cyril.

The door started slowly (really slowly) opening as Cyril activated the master key.

We lost contact with the rest of the company as we entered the building.

I followed Ryan through the blast door to find a lone mercenary in white armor standing in front of us, he immediately dropped his weapon and surrendered.

 _Smart guy_.

We were in a spacious room filled with random crates and barrels sitting next to the concrete walls, there was an elevator shaft at the end of the room.

"So, I assume we have to go down the shaft?" I said looking down at it.

"Yep" Corporal Willis, our drone operator said as he took a Butterfly drone from one of his pockets.

The butterfly shaped robot activated and suddenly flew towards the elevator shaft.

A Camera feed appeared on the top left of my HUD as the drone went down the shaft.

Then it turned to static.

"What just happened?" Ryan asked, looking down the shaft.

"Something fried the drone, must have been a plasma window or something like that" He answered.

"Alright boys and girls, looks like we're doing this old school, Ryan and Thomas, you're in first" Pam ordered.

"Yes ma'am!" We replied in unison.

The Elevator was standing still atop our level, we made sure it stayed that way by shooting at the cables connecting to its lock mechanisms, they would automatically engage once they lost connection.

Then we set down our respective suction cups on the concrete floor and connected them to our carbon nanotube ropes, they could hold a warthog in midair without any significant stress, so we were safe.

I attached the other end of the rope to my armor and looked at Ryan.

"Ready?"

"Indeed my good sir"

"Just shut up" I said as I threw a class II smoke grenade down the shaft, the smoke would block the more common Infrared, Radar and ultraviolet sensors most infantry used but still allow us to use our X-ray, magnetic sensors and sonars to identify hostiles and the architecture of the base.

We started rappelling down the shaft when the grenade hit the ground, the smoke started engulfing us as we came down, finally I hit the ground with a thud and detached my end of the rope and then...

A round missed me by less than ten centimeters.

"Fuck! Hit the deck!" I screamed as more shots came from the corridor.

I couldn't actually see anything in front of me but the battlenet used the suit's sensors to identify and highlight a crate I could use as cover about two meters in front of me, I crawled to it, crouched with my back to it and looked to my right to see Ryan doing the same thing with another crate.

"How can they see us?" Ryan shouted over the gunfire.

"Either they have better sensors then expected or they can't, let's hope it's the second one" I said as I got my MA5B, I turned around placing my gun over the crate and started shooting long bursts down the corridor while my scanners mapped out the base and identified any hostiles.

My HUD identified a pair of mercenaries about twenty meters down the corridor behind some deployable cover.

I took my sticky detonator, adjusted for the distance then shot it at the ceiling above them, the sticky bomb hit the ceiling, then started glowing red and blew up two seconds later, killing them instantly.

Just as I did that Ryan shotgunned a security droid sprinting towards us, it's white chassis fell backwards into the floor then kept still as it deactivated.

The motion tracker showed several more mercenaries coming towards the entrance, the merc upstairs must have sounded a silent alarm.

 _Fucking smart guy._

Zhang and Max started coming down as I switched to my BR and started laying down more accurate fire down the corridor.

Then I almost got shot in the head.

"Okay they can see us" I said hiding behind cover again.

Zhang came next to me and added his assault rifle's fire to our barrage.

"There's a door a few meters ahead" Willis said from up the shaft, if the rest of the squad started coming down it would get crowded real fast.

Lana Rappelled down the shaft and started shooting her SAW at the enemies.

"Okay, Ryan and Thomas, get inside that door, me and Zhang will cover you" He said, reloading his squad automatic weapon.

 _Being a private sucks so much_.

"Yes sir" I said as they started laying down suppressing fire through the thick smoke.

We sprinted to the door, Ryan kicked the wooden door and it flew open.

He went in first followed shortly by me.

"Did not expect that" Ryan said as I realized we had just entered a bathroom.

 _Goddammit._

"Okay Ryan, go to the back of the bathroom"

"Why?" He asked.

"Because there's another room on the other side, now move you moron!" I answered

"Ass"

I took a can of C-7 out of my backpack and started spraying the foaming explosive over the wall.

Once I was satisfied with the amount of explosives-which, to be honest, was total guesswork, I stuck a detonator on it and ran to the other side.

The explosion sent a few solid blocks of concrete flying and collapsed a large section of the wall.

 _Maybe I exaggerated a bit._

I walked through the dust and smoke to see a large server room with a console filled wall on the end.

I opened a video feed to the sergeant and said "I think you might be interested in this sarge"

"Cyril get your ass down there right now, Thom and Ryan secure the area" She shouted back over the comm.

I switched back to the MA5B and started walking through the lines of server racks searching for any guards.

Only to see a turret in front of the console wall, which of course started firing at me immediately.

"Bollocks" I shouted as I got behind one of the racks, surprisingly it didn't care and kept shooting through the rack.

I rolled over, pointed my gun at the turret and emptied the whole clip into it, the turret's death was marked by an underwhelming electric whine.

Ryan came over from the opposite side of the room, he planted a smart mine at the door next to the consoles and looked over at me.

"Sooo… this is going well for a first mission right? I mean, no casualties so far" He started

"Don't jinx it, this mission is far from over" I replied, then turned around and saw Cyril sprinting towards us.

"Cover me" He shouted, uselessly might I add, we were already doing just that, as he sat down on the console and started typing away at it.

"Okay, I'm inserting the ONI intrusion codes" he connected a data crystal to the connection port.

"Shit" He said, typing away at both the computer and his datapad "They're executing a burn code, it's deleting everything"

"Can you stop it?" Ryan asked as he looked over the main screen.

"Nope, I can only try and retrieve the intact files, wait! Disconnect all the racks" He said, I had beat him to it and was already unplugging everything I could see, the ONI techs could retrieve them later.

A merc suddenly stormed through the door only to blow up as the smart mine detonated, but not before he got a shot off at Cyril.

"Cover that door Ryan" I said as I sprinted towards Cyril, medpack in hand, I was the squad's secondary medic so in the lack of Dina it was my responsibility to patch up this bunch of morons.

I sat next to him, he was clutching his left tight, the round must have penetrated his armor.

"Why did I have to be the first one in the squad to be shot" Cyril shouted.

"Shut up or you'll also be the second" I said as I opened the medpack.

I took out the scanner, I could see the round inside his leg as I positioned the scanner over his tight.

Next I took out a magnet and placed it over the wound, its computer would guide the projectile in a way to make the least amount of collateral damage possible as it removed the projectile from the leg.

I muted his comm as he started screaming.

I raised the magnet, put the bullet in a plastic bag so ONI could analyze it later then put it aside and got a biofoam canister from my rucksack.

"This is going to hurt you way, way more than it's going to hurt me" I said with a wide grin.

He flipped me off, then I inserted the canister into his wound and sprayed, I could hear the scream even with the muted comms, I grinned again.

"Cyril can you access the building's schematics trough that computer?" Pam asked as she walked in, the firefight outside seemed to be dying off, and judging by Pam's presence we were winning.

"Why thank you so much for caring about my wound sarge" he answered.

"Stop whining Cyril, we have a job to finish" She replied.

"I think so" He said as he sat in front of the screen again.

"All units, contact has been reestablished, await for further instructions" Captain Kazemi's voice came over the comm as a download bar appeared on my HUD.

As soon as the data packet finished downloading the schematics of the base appeared on the top left of my HUD, as well as a HUD showing our updated objective.

"Alright everybody, reload and let's go" Pam said "Our next objective is a weapons lab"

We reorganized into our original roles and started walking through the metallic white corridors towards the lab, popping additional smokes along the way, the mercs had equipment that could ignore it but it was still better safe than sorry.

The walk towards the lab was relatively uneventful, it looked like the base personnel was evacuating, which was confirmed when the captain said that telemetry showed multiple vehicles leaving the base.

Willis deployed a SD-8 Accipiter that scouted in front of the squad as we went forward.

We stopped in front of the corridor that lead to the lab when the drone identified an enemy position in the middle of the corridor.

It was a machine gun emplacement with three soldiers manning it plus two large deployable cover on each side with a pair of soldiers each along with two crawler drones in front of the emplacements, we had no cover at all.

"Fuck my life" I said as I looked at the camera feed of the stealth drone.

"Ok, this is how we're gonna do it" The sergeant started saying.

"First of we pop some class V smoke, this way nobody will see anything, then Ryan and Zhang will get on the ventilation shaft on top of us, Lana, you start suppressing the enemy position to distract them"

"Once in the ventilation shaft they'll crawl all the way to the back of the enemy position and drop down there" She said marking the position on the squad map.

"Then they'll drop down and throw as many grenades as they can at the position, at this point the rest of the squad will get in the corridor and mop them up while they're distracted" She made a fist with her right hand and smashed her left palm.

"Dina, you stay back for when this inevitably goes wrong" She finished.

"Okay go go go!" She shouted and I crouched behind Lana.

She hefted her SAW up and started suppressing the enemy position as I threw my only class V smoke canister, the crawler drones sped towards our position at a scary pace.

The enemy machine gun plus the two drones started firing thus forcing Lana to hunker down, at least she managed to distract them.

I made a gesture for everybody to retreat then rounded the corner and started firing my BR at the incoming drones, they mostly shrugged it of though I managed to take out one of the rightmost drone's sensors.

Just as they were a few meters from the corner I took off running towards the rest of my squad, now safely behind cover a few dozen meters back in the corridor.

I was halfway through when the drones crossed the corner and started firing, fortunately the smoke was raising hell with their sensors and they couldn't actually hit anything.

Unfortunately the same was true for us.

That didn't stop Mamika, our rocket launcher marine from firing her jackhammer.

The explosion took both of the drones out and sent me flying a few meters before hitting a wall, my nose started bleeding but I ignored it for now, focusing on cursing her to high heavens, the bitch sounded almost giddy from having fired her rocket launcher at a combat situation for the first time.

My curses were followed by a series of explosions and we rushed towards the enemy position.

The smoke had started to dissipate so we could actually see the silhouettes of the enemies illuminated by the muzzle flashes from their weapons.

The mercs manning the machinegun were sprawled over the floor, either unconscious or dead, the two mercs in the left barrier were still firing at Zhang and Ryan while one of the soldiers in the left barricade was on the floor clutching his belly and the other was firing in our direction.

We quickly mopped them up, but not before Ryan's status flashed as he got shot by a mercs shotgun.

"Dina, check Ryan, everybody else, prepare for breaching!" Pam said while reloading her DMR.

"He's okay, the rounds did penetrate and he just broke a few ribs!" Dina diagnosed.

"How is breaking multiple ribs ok!" Ryan shouted as Dina stuck a painkiller on his belly.

I took a position to the right of the door leading to the lab while Willis stopped on my opposite site, he placed the breaching charge and a timer appeared on my HUD.

When the timer reached zero the breaching charge detonated and I took a step forward into the lab.

It was a spacious room with screens lining all the walls and a large, lowered rectangle in the middle, there were numerous computers all over the room as well as a plethora of mechanical tools and scanners.

Oh, there was also a gigantic missile on the lowered rectangle, because of course there was.

 _Do I say that too much? nah._

As for the people, it looked like almost everybody had evacuated, because there were only three mercs, two of which me and Willis immediately dispatched, and a scientist.

The remaining mercenary and the scientist were standing by the missile.

The merc took out a pistol and aimed it at the back of the scientist's head, fortunately I was quicker and shot his forearm with my BR.

Which went back at an unnatural angle before rearranging itself, instead of blood there was a thick white liquid on the floor and the hole in his forearm had a metallic gray color.

 _Oh shit_.

"Combat cyborg!" I screamed as I threw myself to the floor and started firing full auto into his position, the scientist quickly ducked out of the way before the bullets started hitting the Cyborg.

The damaged forearm suddenly turned into a machinegun that he aimed at Willis while running towards me at an incredibly fast pace.

Willis status suddenly went yellow as he got hit.

"Bollocks" I said as I started shooting at a fan on the ceiling, the metallic fan fell down on top of the cyborg giving me precious seconds to jump away.

Pam threw a sonic grenade near the cyborg, the detonation sent him flying a few meters into one of the screens on the wall.

He got up and shot a missile towards her direction, Pam ducked but the missile hit the wall and Ray, the squad sniper had his status go yellow.

I tackled the cyborg in his mid-torso before he could hurt anyone else, that was a bad idea.

I sank my knife into his right shoulder, immobilizing his arm, he then raised his left arm and punched me right in the belly, I could hear something crack.

 _There goes my ribs_.

With a gigantic grin he used my momentary pain induced distraction to free his right arm and push me of him with both arms, I went a few meters back.

"Bad move asshole" I said as I got my sticky detonator, his grin immediately dropped as I aimed it at him and shot.

The bomb hit his belly.

"Shit" He said before the bomb detonated painting the room in a glowing white.

"Someone secure his cyberbrain" Pam said as she walked towards the scientist.

I got up and started searching on my medpack for some painkillers.

"Cyril, secure any data that's still left, you" Pam said, pointing her DMR at the scientist "What were you doing here"

"Well, no use in lying now is there?" He sighted "I want a deal"

"We're marines asshole, that's not our jurisdiction" Pam answered.

"Touché, well, and whichever ONI agent is watching, this counts as me cooperating, this base was tasked with developing a missile that was invisible for all the sensor types in existence"

"For what?" Cyril asked as he sat down on the console.

"Isn't it obvious? Nuking Sydney and New Alexandria, take out the entire UEG government with one high yield nuke and then take over the rest of human space"

"And did you do it?" I asked, scanning the missile.

"Very nearly, we only had to find out how to mask the signature from the maneuvering thrusters and the heat when it entered atmosphere and we would have had it"

"Shit!" The squad exclaimed in unison.

"Captain did you get that?" The sergeant said into her Comm.

"Yes I did, we have to secure everything in here to make sure we can develop a countermeasure"

"About that, this base has a self destruct mechanism" The scientist added.

"Of course it has" I added sarcastically.

"Well, seeing as this base is basically cliché central, I'm assuming there's a way to stop it?" The captain asked.

"No, command is not that stupid, but if you cut both normal and emergency power it won't activate"

"What were you saying about them not being stupid?" I added.

"Alright then, I've located the emergency power supply and there's a squad on its way, Sergeant Pamela, I want you squad to head down to the command center and deactivate the main power supply"

"Yes sir, let's go people"

The command center was a several hundred meters ahead and a few corridors down, we got there pretty fast considering half the squad was on painkillers and stimulants due to their injuries, fortunately the Base was deserted by this point.

Well, except for the corridor leading to the command center, which had a large UGCV plus a squad of mercenaries and what looked like another combat cyborg.

"Captain" Pamela said while feeding the drone feed to command "I don't think we're gonna be able to do this alone"

"Agreed, we're sending a squad to flank their position, plus some heavier support for you"

"Yes sir, thank you sir" Pam said before contacting the other squad leader to formulate a plan of attack.

A minute later a SHIV armed with a Gauss canon and secondary heavy machine gun appeared with two mobile cover drones, this was going to be fun.

"Okay, this is the plan, we're going to throw a class V smoke grenade plus four frag grenades, then Lana, you get down on the corner and start suppressing them, Thomas, run to the other side of the corridor and use the corner as cover, the rest go with the cover to the middle of the corridor, stay behind the cover drones and pick you targets, Lana, fire you grenade launcher at the ATV and once it's point defense is down Mamika blows it up"

Everybody nodded.

Pam started talking on her private comm then threw her last smoke grenade.

"Okay, go go go!" She said as she sprinted towards the middle of the corridor.

I started sprinting too, but it looked like the enemy was focused on the other squad because only a few shots came our way.

As I took cover behind the corner I could hear the mini thunder that came from the SHIV's gauss cannon.

I aimed towards the enemy position, they were indeed focused on the other side, thought the two cyborgs were now facing us, well, one of them, the other had been ripped in half by the SHIV's gauss cannon.

Unfortunately the SHIV was quickly destroyed by the other cyborg's missile launcher.

I shot a burst at his forehead, the first shot missed and the second was absorbed by his armored cranium but the third one blew the back of his head open as it exited his cranium, destroying his cyberbrain and killing him instantly.

Mamika shoot two missiles at the ATV, the first one was detonated prematurely, shot down by the point defense system, the second one hit its aft and penetrated the weak engine armor.

The ATV blew up, throwing the rest of the mercenaries at the walls, at this point they were surrounded and had almost no cover so the four remaining ones threw their weapons down the floor and surrendered.

And that was for the best, because the other marine squad was devastated, half the squad was either heavily wounded or dead and the rest also had at least some minor wounds.

Zhang put some C-12 "explosive putty" as he liked to call it on the blast door separating us from the command center, it blew a man sized hole in the door from which we passed through, I was the first one this time due to my light injuries.

The first thing I saw when I entered the command center was the fist of a woman, probably a cyborg, heading directly for my head, I jumped back, probably saving my life, I wouldn't know as I blacked out at that exact moment.

There we go, my first story, I decided to split this chapter in two due to the length, anyway I appreciate any criticism at all as this is my first story, I would also appreciate links to sites containing military tactics, writing tips, concepts on space combat and everything else you can find that could help someone writing a Halo story.


	2. Introduction II

**November 3, 2525 Volgograd, Earth.**

"Goodbye mom" I said as I hugged her for the last time in at least two years.

"Goodbye Katya, we'll miss you" She replied.

"Don't worry, l'll be sending as many messages as I can"

"I know you will, be safe"

"I will mom, bye" I said as I headed for the car that had stopped in front of our family house in the suburbs of Volgograd, I had already said my goodbyes to everybody else, but my mom insisted in staying as much time with me as she could.

"Just one last thing" She said taking a medallion out of her pocket and handing it to me "This is the Russian coat of arms, take it with you and remember where you're from"

"Thank you mom, I will" I always found this attachment that the people of Earth had for nations that had been extinct for centuries strange, but it was still nice to have something from home.

I got into the car with tears in my eyes "Volga bar please" I said, I was going to meet my friends one last time by the Volga river before heading to Sevastopol where I would be meeting the rest of my unit.

 _"_ _Yes ma'am"_ The car said as the doors closed and it accelerated, it was raining tonight, yet the city lights were beautiful, it was conflicted just like my emotions right now, torn between sadness and excitement over getting called for my first tour of duty, it had after all, only been a month since I got out of bootcamp.

The car stopped and I was greeted by my friends at the entrance of the bar, some of them were crying and they all looked sad, people from Earth rarely enlisted nowadays, they were all getting into college soon while I was going on a combat tour and then applying for the New Paris military school of engineering.

 _Still worth it._

We spent the next three hours getting hammered and telling stories about me, it was fun, unfortunately I couldn't show up drunk at Sevastopol so I had to moderate myself.

My phone started buzzing when the clock hit 2 AM, I said my goodbyes to everybody and got on a car again, this time heading for the MagLev station in downtown.

I got into the station and boarded the first car heading to Sevastopol.

The ride was uneventful, the winter snow made the landscape beautiful, but boring after some time, I switched to my datapad and started studying the specifications of my brand new tank, a MkII Grizzly tank manufactured on Camber.

Which I was going to be riding it in a few hours.

The MagLev stopped at Sevastopol, it took less than an hour to get there, when I got out of the station I found a UNSC bus on the street with several other people crowding in, it looked like I wasn't the only one getting here.

I got into the bus and walked all the way to the nearest free seat, there was a young man next to it, he had short brown hair, brown eyes and a tall muscular build.

"Hey" I said as I sat down next to him "Katya Alexandrova, nice to meet you"

"Joni Hammil"

"Nice name, what's your unit?"

"227thHeavy Armored Division, the bumblebees" He said with a deep voice spreading his palms in front of him like he was making an advertisement.

"Me too" I shouted, half the bus started looking at us, looked like most people didn't get to sleep that much, time to wake them up!

"Everybody who's 227 raise your hand" I got two middle fingers, five actual hands and a guy that raised his hand before his friend pulled him down, Joni was sinking into his seat looking like he wanted to become invisible.

I got down, looked at him and started laughing "Looks like everybody's in a good mood"

"You're crazy, you know that right?" He said hiding his grin.

"What, just wanted some intel, we're supposed to do that anyways"

"So what are you exactly? force recon would fit your madness"

"Nope, tank gunner, and you?"

"That's cool, I'm a combat engineer, looks like I'll be saving your ass" He grinned openly this time.

"Trust me, my ass will be the last one to need saving, anyway, where are you from anyway?" I said excitedly.

"Are you like hyperactive or something? Anyway, I'm actually from Arcadia, though you probably don't know it, what about you?"

"Nope, no idea, and I'm from Volgograd, it's relatively close to here" I said enthusiastically.

We spent another half an hour making idle small talk before the bus stopped in front of the Sevastapol military base.

"Nice meeting you" I said getting up from my seat.

"You too, see you later"

I took my rucksack and walked got into a line forming in front of one of the several office buildings in front of the military complex.

I spent some twenty minutes there before facing a bored looking secretary.

"Lance Corporal Katya Alexandrova, your transport will be arriving in two hours, you should meet up with your crew, hangar 3B" A waypoint suddenly appeared on my vision as my neural uplink downloaded the information and transferred it directly to my brain.

"Okay thanks" I said and started jogging towards the hangar, it was cold outside but I didn't really care.

I got there to see two other people talking next to the tank, unfortunately it was covered by a tarp.

"Hey there" I said "You must be the rest of the crew, I'm Katya Alexandrova, nice to meet you"

"Hello Katya, I'm Sergeant Alice Lopez, tank commander" She said happily, she had long, dirty blond hair and amber eyes, it looked her on her average frame.

"I'm Joshua Takei, obviously I'm the driver, anyway, now that everybody's here can we please get in our camp, it's freezing here" He said, he had short jet black hair and black eyes, as well as a tall but thin frame.

"Wait" I interrupted "First we have to name it, I suggest Mister Pickles"

"Good idea, I officially Dub tee Mister Pickles" Alice replied enthusiastically.

"What? No, that's a terrible name!" Joshua protested.

"Too late, it's done!" Alice said while signaling us to help her, we all went to the side and started pulling the tarp, revealing the shining olive armor of our brand new grizzly.

"Oh it's a beauty" I said, hypnotized by the tank.

"Come on, let's get in already, it's freezing in here" Joshua said.

I got up onto the tank then pressed a button next to the hatches that made them open up immediately, I could see the Driver's seat to my right, the commanders to my left and the gunner in front, I dropped into the gunner's seat and pushed a lever next to it, making it retreat back into the hull under the grizzly's turret.

Alice and Joshua came after me and sat on their respective seats "Alright everybody, activation in three…two…one" The tank interior lit up as the hatches closed and a plethora of screens activated.

"Hydrogen engine 100% functional" Joshua said.

"Sensors functional" I said.

"Communications suite online" Alice said, we continued the status check for the next ten minutes "flawless" Alice said when we finished.

"Okay everybody, prepare for neural synch and let's get going" This was going to be my first neural synch with them, interesting.

A countdown flashed into my mind as my neural uplink connected with the tank, once it hit zero my mind was flooded, suddenly I could see everything that Joshua, Alice and Mr. Pickles could, I could also feel what they were thinking and see the tank's hull as an extension of my own body, it was an incredible feeling.

" _Are you two on some kind of drug? How can you both be so cheery at this time in the morning_ " Joshua exclaimed grumpily, oh wait, no, he though grumpily.

 _Awesome._

" _Better get used to it Joshua_ " I though " _Cause it's not going away anytime soon"_

 _"_ _I realize that, unfortunately"_

" _Okay people, lets go_ " Alice said/though.

Joshua started driving the grizzly at high speed towards the landing zone, once we got there we were met by eleven other grizzlies and four Rhino self-propelled artillery pieces.

The tanks were arranged in a lose circle around which a fire had been set up and the tank crews were chatting.

We got out from our tank and started heading there, greeting everybody on our way.

"So, this is the third tank platoon then? I like them" I said, having left my rucksack in the tank and still on my civilian clothes.

"Yep, me too, but I wonder where's the lieutenant?" Alice asked, that was answered moments later by the lieutenant activating one of the grizzlies' floodlights.

"Alright everybody" he shouted "transports are coming in, everybody is getting on the same pod, we'll be stationed at the UNSC Target Practice" The name of our ship elicited a round of chuckles.

"Once we get there" He continued with a smile on his face, he had red hair and green eyes as well as a pale complexion "I want you all to sleep for a few hours, then, at 1400 standard UNSC time I want you to meet me at auditory 6-C, is that clear?"

A round of yes sirs answered his question.

"Good, everybody dismissed"

The pod landed as more of the Rhinos came in, we got into our tank again and headed towards the troop carrier.

We drove the thank into the pod then disembarked and went to the second floor of the ship which was much more comfortable then the tanks during takeoff.

"So… where are you two from?" I asked, trying to start some small talk as the ship started shaking from the rapid ascendance to orbit.

"I'm from Ganymede city, guess which planet? Ganymede" Joshua said sarcastically, he was trying desperately to sleep.

"And I'm from Gydnia in Mars, what about you" Alice answered.

"Volgograd, it's actually less than an hour from here"

The ship had some heavy turbulence and then I suddenly lost balance as gravity went out, this was only the third time I had been in zero gee and I loved every second of it.

We got into the ship and went into our quarters, which were actually just the cryo bay, but the pods were open and actually quite comfortable, more so than the boot camp beds.

I put my rucksack on a designated locker, there was a bathroom at the end of the cryo bay, which seemed to fit the entire company, I took my standard olive green uniform, which had both my name, rank and the insignia of the Bumblebees, an angry bee holding a rocket launcher, the name and rank were in my left chest while the insignia was on the left sleeve, and then put it next to my cryopod and laid down on it to sleep.

I woke up at 1200, took my uniform and went to the bathroom to take a shower.

After the shower I went to the nearest dining hall, only to realize I had no idea where it was, I went back to the cryo room, got my UNSC issued datapad and downloaded the Target Practice's data packet.

I clicked on the map icon and found the nearest dining hall, it was a short five minute trip there and when I came back, I was happy to see Joni seating alone on a table, which wasn't actually surprising because the whole place was deserted, next to at least a meter of some kind of transparent polymer.

I passed went to an automated food dispenser, got a bowl of spaghetti with meatballs plus some açai and chocolate soda, I then sat opposite to him, Joshua came next, I invited him to sit with us, he groaned the went to fill his plate before sitting next to Joni on the opposite side of the table.

Joni was watching a game of Griffball on a 2-D holographic projection.

"Who's playing?" Joshua asked.

"The Martian Manhunters against the Manassan Moas"

"Hmmm… okay I'm rooting for the Moas, can't let those filthy Koslovs win"

"Hey!" Alice slapped Joshua on the back of his head as she came to the hall.

"Yeah, that was a bad move, they suck… hard" Joni commented still immersed on the feed.

"Silly peasants, Earth always wins in the end" I said, getting glares from the whole table "Anyway, does anybody know where we're being deployed" I added quickly, trying desperately not to get lynched.

"No idea, its strange isn't it, they normally tell us in advance" Alice commented.

"Guess that's why we have to meet at the auditorium" I said "Hey, do you have to go to any auditorium Joni?"

"Yep, but why are they being so secretive?"

"Aliens" Joshua deadpanned, we all immediately burst into laughter.

"There's probably been a big move by an insurrectionist faction" I said, trying to stifle my laughter.

"Most likely, talking about the auditorium, we have to get going" Alice said finishing her meal.

We all got up and started walking towards our auditorium, turns out Joni was in the same one, it was quite a large auditorium, it could probably seat an entire regiment.

Colonel Hasan Massoud, the leader of the 1009thArmored Cavalry regiment, my tank's unit, stood at the center of the podium on the auditorium.

"Good evening soldiers, in two hours the Target Practice will enter slipspace, we will be heading towards Reach where we will meet with the newly formed task force X-Ray commandeered by Vice Admiral Preston Jeremiah Cole, we will also meet the remaining elements of the 227th division and form up with the 51st Marine Expeditionary Unit, once all our forces have assembled we'll head towards the colony of Harvest where a large force from the United Rebel Front has invaded, this information is top secret, therefore we will be cutting contact with the exterior from now on, I'll see you again in Reach everybody, dismissed."

Everybody started filling out of the room, I went to the Cryo bay, took my clothes of and entered my cryo pod, the last thing I though before losing consciousness was how cold it was.

 **November 3, 2525, Luna OCS Academy**

I was seated in my room at the academy with my roommate and now ONI intelligence analyst Ellie Sanders looking at a monitor.

"I don't get it" I said as I took a sip from my banana and chocolate soda, with extra sugar I had added "Why aren't they releasing this to the media?"

"It doesn't fit with previous action during operation Trebuchet, they were highly publicized" Ellie agreed.

"It's even confidential to other UNSC sources, the data packet's classified A-5"

"Maybe it's a surprise attack"

"Not with this amount of movement, HIGHCOM couldn't possibly hope to hide the movement of over forty warships and a hundred thousand Marines"

"True, but if it's not a surprise attack then what is it?"

"Aliens" Ellie joked

I snorted.

"Worst case scenario they lost a colony to rebellion"

"Good guess Liz, but there's been no major activity from any of the larger insurrectionist groups on the chatternet, neither have the syndicates or the future war cult been acting up, and there's no other organization in human space that could possibly warrant an entire MEU, plus, why the secrecy?"

"ONI shenanigans?" I suggested.

"You forget yourself ma'am" Ellie said with an exaggerated posh accent.

"Oh never" I replied equally posh "Anyway Liz, I have to go, call you when I'm in Reach" I said as I kissed her on the cheek, got up and took my rucksack.

The dazzling white walls of the academy were quite fashionable, that and the polymer windows at the walls, floor and ceiling which allowed me to see Earth in the distance, it also allowed me to see my new ship, the Cannon Fodder Paris Class Frigate, straight out of the Reyes McLees shipyards and awaiting it's new crewmembers, hovering a few kilometers from the academy.

I walked into hangar bay 8-C, it was a large rectangle with a blast door on it's ceiling, there was a pelican dropship inside waiting for the crewmembers to arrive, I walked into it's loading bay and set down next to a tall and lanky man of my same age, he had Asian features and brown hair with amber eyes.

"Hey" I said enthusiastically "I'm Elizabeth Reichel, Weapons officer"

"Wu Chao, navigation, at your service" He said with a grin.

A brunette came walking into the pelican and sat next to us.

"Hey everybody, Ensign Mabel Fritz, I'm engineering, what about you?"

We reintroduced ourselves to her and the other people coming in, the pelican was filled and took off in about ten minutes.

I was already accustomed to zero g and it wasn't like the moon had high gravity, but I always loved the sensation of weightlessness, plus I had brought some fluorescent water specifically for that purposed and delighted the rest of the crew in the pelican with my little zero gee water show.

Then gravity was restored and the water splashed down of the floor as the pelican got into one of the frigate's hangars, I could hear a dull thud as the pelican touched the interior hull and grabbed my rucksack while standing up.

I got out of the pelican and downloaded the schematics of the ship to my neural uplink, a map suddenly appeared on my field of vision and I mentally tagged my room.

Once I got there it became clear that I would be living with the rest of the bridge crew, there were six bunks in the room with a screen on the end of the room and a bathroom on the right side, there was also a desk with several monitors and two chairs and a weapons locker by the bathroom door.

I put my rucksack on a locker below my bed, Chao would be sleeping on top of me, I took my datapad out of the rucksack and downloaded the ship's data packet, it was quite light, expected of a brand new ship.

Still, I was excited, the sight of the brilliant white interior walls made me giddy with excitement and happiness and I wanted to examine every cubic centimeter of the ship.

An AI suddenly materialized on the room's sole holotank.

"Hello everybody, I'm Lupa" She took the form of a large wolf, just like the one from the Roman myths.

"The commander is waiting for you at the bridge, I'm uploading the directions to your neural uplinks"

The directions suddenly appeared on my vision as they finished downloading themselves into my brain, the elevator to the bridge was right beside our room.

 _Convenient._

"Shall we go" I said as I put my datapad on top of my bed and started towards the bridge.

Mabel and the rest of the crew started following me as we went to meet our captain.

We keyed a button that called down an elevator that would take us to the bridge, there was also a pair of emergency stair but we weren't looking forward to trying that just yet.

The elevator opened allowing us inside, it was bizarrely playing some cliché elevator music for all of the five seconds it took for us to get into the bridge.

"Welcome to the Cannon Fodder" The commander said, extending his arms, he couldn't be much older than us, though I knew that he was a veteran, because I read his record of course, I'm not some kind of detective.

"I'm Commander Holloway, you've already met Lupa, so let's get down to business and make our first neural synch" He said while seating down on the captain's chair.

I went to my seat, the weapons console, it was on the upper right of the bridge, with Engineering by my side and Navigations on the front right.

I sat down and connected my neural uplink to the ship's network.

A countdown appeared on my screen.

The countdown reached zero and I was momentarily disoriented from the flux of new information flooding into my brain, suddenly I could see what the ship's sensors could see, I could feel it's superstructure as part of my body, I could sense everyone else's surface thoughts and most importantly, I could use the ship's immense computational power to enhance my mental capacities.

"Alright everybody" The commander though/said "There's a Phoenix class assault ship in orbit over earth right now, we're going to meet them about forty thousand kilometers away from earth, heading 42 degrees up by 31 starboard, 20 thousand kilometers from our position, I want a hundred g acceleration"

"Roger that" Chao said "Travel time is about three hours and twenty minutes"

"Wonderful" The commander said as the ship shook while the inertial dampeners compensated for the acceleration "Everybody get some rest, will be heading for Reach once we meet with the Target Practice"

"Don't go to cryo, I want you all to get to know the ship and the crew before we get to Reach, we'll receive a mission debriefing there" As he finished he got up and went to a wooden locker next to the entrance, he opened it and got a bottle of champagne and several glasses.

"This is for the Cannon Fodder's inaugural flight!" he said as the cork flew off, we all got up and had some, I didn't like champagne, but this one was surprisingly good, probably the effect of finally being in a UNSC ship.

"I'll be in the activity hall if anyone wants to meet me.

I hadn't slept for at least eighteen hours but the excitement of flying a brand new ship kept me awake.

"Let's go see the fusion reactor!" I shouted, Chao went to sleep but the rest of the bridge crew went with me, we were all newbies, this was the first ship we would be serving in, in fact the majority of the crew was green, fresh off from the UNSC training centers all over human space.

It was a ten minutes' walk towards the Reactor, I placed my hand on a biometric scanner and was allowed to enter the reactor's control room.

"Hello" I greeted the two engineers seated in the room, staring at several sensor feeds from the reactor "I'm Elizabeth, weapons officer"

There was also a window in the same wall that showed the main chamber for the reactor.

"Hi, I'm Marc and this is Ruth, you're newbies too huh" He said, looking at me and the other ensigns entering the control room.

"Yep, isn't this place kind of empty?"Mabel asked coming to my side.

"Everybody's still setting in, we're just doing preliminary checks to make sure everything's okay and avoid a hydrogen dust explosion"

"Got it" I said "Can we see it?"

"Of course" He pressed a button and a set of blast doors opened leading to the central chamber.

As I passed through the blast doors I was awed by the gigantic donut shape of the Tokamak.

There was a large window on it that illuminated the whole room with the purple-pink light of ionized hydrogen.

There were several consoles spread throughout the room, all monitoring the state of the reactor and the fusion reaction happening inside of it.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" Mark said "It's a brand new V4/L-DFR from Naoto Technologies, plus two new secondary Ultor T-54 Thorium Reactors, if there's a breach in the V4 we can fix and restart it within ten minutes, fastest time on any UNSC ship"

"Wow"

"Wow indeed, it's replacing the reactors of all the UNSC escorts, but what I really want to see is the Ultor T-100 that's being developed for the Marathons, that thing's supposed to have double the output of any reactor of similar size we have nowadays"

We stayed there for a few more hours discussing before we went back to our room, we were going to rest for a few hours then eat and keep exploring but right now I was busy searching the ship's library for any info I could find on Insurrectionist tactics and our commanding officer, Preston Jeremiah Cole.

 **November 15, 2525, UNSC Target Practice, Geosynchronous orbit of Reach.**

 _This is going to be clusterfuck_.

That was all I could think about as I boarded the Target Practice, the UNSC had mobilized an entire MEU for this operation, yet no one outside of Sidney or the MEU knew it was even happening and even the people in the MEU were virtually blind, my data packet had been a page long.

We have no information on enemy numbers, positions or equipment, heck, I don't even know who is it we're fighting, I should talk to the captain about that.

"Hello second lieutenant Maxwell" The holographic form of a woman with a cat head and Egyptian robes appeared on a nearby holotank as I got out of the boarding tube that connected the Target Practice to the Anchor station I had been aboard.

"My name is Bastet, the ship's AI"

"I'm uploading the map of the ship to your neural uplink, you should know that your company commander wants to meet with you"

"Thank you" I replied as I started following the directions uploaded to my brain towards the cryo bay.

I had just been made lieutenant to a platoon in the 227th heavy armored division that had lost it's lieutenant in some classified operation on Jotunheim, apparently that had been its first combat operation, and I was fresh off officer candidate school, yet more evidence of an imminent clusterfuck, the overwhelming majority of the MEU was green, no veteran expeditionary unit could be assembled faster so they settled for us.

But I could worry about that later, I had to meet the rest of the company, specially my platoon.

Cryo bay 7-A fit an entire company, more specifically the entirety of B company, I placed my rucksack in my designated locker then tagged my captain's location.

As I was leaving a marine, most likely from my platoon came over to greet me "Hey sir!" He said enthusiastically "You must be the new lieutenant, I'm Private Ryan Parker, first squad, second platoon"

"Nice to meet you parker, Lieutenant Maxwell O'Connor, I have to meet the captain now but save a spot for me in your table at dinner time, I'm looking forward to meeting my platoon"

"Aye aye sir" He said before leaving.

I walked towards a conference room next to an amphitheater, once I got inside I could see a man with captain insignias as well as another male and two female lieutenants sitting on a table, plus a woman with a standard issue ONI trench coat standing.

 _Why do I even know what the ONI trench coat looks like?_

"Lieutenant Maxwell O'Connor reporting for duty" I said, saluting the captain

"At ease lieutenant, I'm captain Roger Kazemi, and those are lieutenants Batou Matsuda" He said pointing to the male lieutenant with Asian features "Mallory Bluth" He said pointing towards the blond lieutenant "And first lieutenant Azar Tavana" The lieutenant with Mediterranean features nodded.

"And the spook that's been attached to us" He said turning around to look at the woman with the trench coat "Is allegedly lieutenant Kira Kusanagi"

"Nice to meet you all" I seated at a chair pointed to me by the captain.

"So..." I continued "Did we get any more intel captain, because the data packet was… sparse to say the least"

"Nope, only thing we got was the ONI map of harvest with all the points of interest, but that map's from 2521 and the only update it has is a few points of interest being declared invalid, whatever that means, maybe you could enlighten us Ms. Kusanagi" We all looked at her.

"It's a polite way to say they have been destroyed, beyond that neither I nor the rest of Blue division know anything, but what I do know it's that there will be a debriefing to the entire task force, expeditionary unit included, after we jump to slipspace" She said, leaning back on the wall.

"Wonderful" He sighted "Anyway, I trust you too have read the reports on our first operation?"

We both nodded "Only twelve dead and thirty wounded" I said "That's pretty good"

"Would have gone better if we knew there were combat cyborgs there" Batou said.

"Did ONI manage to retrieve the files anyway?" The captain looked at the ONI spook.

"According to the report we managed to retrieve about 40 percent of the total data stored in the base, plus the three missile prototypes and a few other bits and pieces, plus the captured scientist, section 3 decided to continue their project"

"What a surprise" Mallory said sarcastically "I take it they didn't get everything out either?"

"No, the Lotus syndicate only managed to retrieve a part of the data, and we're making sure they can't continue research"

"You mean killing the scientists" I said, she shrugged.

"Moving on to some good news, the 51st is the first unit in the UNSC to be issued the new Excalibur armor" As he said that the image of an olive green armor with a dull grey undersuit appeared on the screen.

"The undersuit, aside from being flame retardant, hydrophobic and made of a CNT and polymer fabric that can resist low power small arms fire and shrapnel, has a new powered exoesqueleton inside of it"

Batou whistled happily.

"This exoesqueleton doubles the carrying capacity of a standard marine, this means we can now carry double our equipment and not even feel it, it also allow us to carry the new titanium A-polymer armor around without significant strain, this armor can shrug off anything short of a heavy mg round, and best of all, it allows us to go faster"

"It doesn't actually makes us any faster but it increases our resistance allot, so now we can run for hours without tiring, that red son of a bitch finally made up for all those shitty Christmas at the OCS"

We all agreed with him, I had a wide grin in my face, this was by far the best present you could give a marine.

"It's based on a new armor system developed for a special ONI project, but I don't really know any more than that" Kusanagi said, she was obviously happy too, after all, she would be going down with us.

"And we also got one more present" The image on the screen switched to a six wheeled rectangular drone with a machinegun and sensor array on top.

"This, ladies and gentleman, is the bulldog UCGV, the marines newest pack mule, it can carry additional ammo and equipment for a whole squad, perform fast medevacs when necessary, has a HMG for assisting in combat and last but not least, a full sensor suite coupled with top of the line communications equipment, including a laser transceiver and two recon drones.

 _This is the happiest day of my life._

"All those things are stored down in the armory, we'll get to see them after the debriefing, everybody's dismissed for now"

We all got up, saluted and left the room.

I went directly to the dining hall were the rest of the company would be dining, the other lieutenants came with me but both the captain and the spook stayed in the small conference room.

I came inside and saw Parker waving at me from one of the tables, there were eleven other people seated there, I nodded at him.

I went over to the food dispenser and got myself a moa burger, they were by far my favorite food in the entire galaxy, I also got some coke and went over to the table.

"Hey lieutenant" He said happily as I sat on the table.

"Nice to see you again Parker, and to those who haven't met me yet, I'm lieutenant Maxwell O'Connor, but you can call me max"

Everybody else introduced themselves as we ate, it was a charming squad.

"I heard good things about your squad, exceptional conduct during your operation" I said.

"If you call getting beat up and shot by asshole cyborgs excellent performance" Thomas, the small marine with brown hair and eyes said.

"Don't mind him" The sergeant pamela interrupted "He's just butthurt because he got his ass handed to him by a girl even smaller then him"

"She punched him so hard he fainted" Ryan said laughing.

"First off, she was a cyborg, second off, should I remind you people of how you cried when I tried to fix you up?" He interjected.

"That's just because you're a shoddy medic" Dina, the squad's designated medic said.

"Like you have any moral ground, you're basically Satan Dina" Cyril said.

"I wasn't talking to you dicknuts" She replied.

"Oh how mature, next you're going to be say…"

"Shut up Cyril" The rest of the squad said in unison.

"Ok you know what! I'm not getting sucked into this again, switching topics, did we get any intel lieutenant?" Cyril asked.

"Nothing, but they're supposed to brief us just after we make the jump to slipspace, which should be happening any minute now" I said while mentally calling up the clock that my neural uplink could project on my vision.

"But" I said to the sound of the groans coming from the table "I've got some other news, both good and bad"

"Bad news is we have the honor of personally babysitting an ONI spook" The whole tabled groaned again.

"But, we're also getting two new early Christmas presents"

"I don't celebrate Christmas" Zhang said jokingly.

"Well you do know, because general Claus decided to give us a brand new _power armor_ " I said, emphasizing the last words "And a new drone to accompany us" That cheered the squad right up.

I started repeating the entire infodump that the captain had given us much to the enjoyment of the squad, after that I got up and went to meet the rest of the platoon, finding my senior NCO, Staff Sergeant Melinda Banks, as well as Staff sergeant João Rodriguez, the leader of the Cougar squad attached to our platoon and gunny sergeant Sebastian Bonaparte, the leader of our pelican flight.

By the time I was done getting to know the platoon we had entered slipspace and the debriefing was about to commence.

Our platoon went to the amphitheater and sat down together, the whole of the hundred and third Mechanized brigade was here.

Colonel Wu came to the center of the stage, at the same time, a holographic representation of Harvest appeared next to him.

"Ladies and gentleman" the colonel paused "And the backstabbing rat bastards also known as ONI" He added, eliciting chuckles from the audience.

"I have no doubt about what you're wondering right now, are we finnaly going to get some intel, enemy force composition, positions, supplies and all those thing?"

"The answer is no, can we at least know who is it we're fighting, maybe the URF or one of the syndicates" He looked over the amphitheater.

"Also no, because we won't be fighting any of them, in fact, there is not a single human on Harvest right now"

 _Wait what, that colony had three million people._

"I'm sure you're all very confused, but don't worry, I'm going to explain it"

"On January 17, 2525, UNSC forces aboard a cargo freighter near Harvest made contact with an alien civilization that identifies itself as the Covenant" All sounds on the amphitheater died, no one spoke a word.

"On February 11 we made formal contact between our two civilizations, It did not end well"

 _This is getting worse._

"By February 23 all the three million habitants of Harvest had either been evacuated, or killed"

"On April 20th, the CMA sent three ships to investigate the allegations of the survivors, only one ship survived, she appeared in orbit above Reach late last month, the three ships had engaged an alien ship, it destroyed two of them and heavily damaged the other in fourteen seconds, their only response to our first contact protocols, to broadcast this message in all languages"

The audio played in English.

 **"** _Your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument"_

"In other words, we are officially at war with an alien civilization"

 _So much worse_

"We have no intel on enemy numbers or positions, what we do have is a very detailed report on all the alien races" He emphasized the s indicating plurality "From the marine elements present at Harvest"

"First off" he said as the holographic representation of a short, bipedal thingy with a visible exoesqueleton and some kind of breathing apparatus over it's mouth "The grunts, as our marines have lovingly named them"

"They appear to be the alien… well… grunts, terrible morale and terrible aim, but huge numbers, aim for the equipment on their backs, it's a flammable gas tank"

"Secondly" The holographic image switched to that of an oversized bipedal cross between a velociraptor and a turkey "Come the Jackals, they serve as both direct combatants and snipers/sharpshooters, great shoots and carry a shield gauntlet on their arms, oh, did I mention that? They have energy shielding"

 _So so much worse._

"And last but not least" A gigantic ape appeared next to the colonel "The brutes, they seem to be the leaders of the aliens, they are extremely dangerous, capable of shrugging off direct hits to their bodies and possessing extreme strength, they should not be engaged without the use of heavy weapons, fortunately they seem to be functionally retarded when it comes to modern military tactics.

"A more detailed data packet is being uploaded to all your datapads, Regiment dismissed"

As I got up there was only one word in my head.

 _Shit._

And here's the second part of the introductions, if it seemed kind of rushed at parts it's because I just want to focus on writing the Second Battle of Harvest.

Also, I need to know if my humor and dialog work, I want to make the story feel a bit more alive by having idle chit chat and things like that but I have no idea if it's working so please let me know.


	3. Trial by Fire I

**Ensign Elizabeth Reichel, March 1, 2526, On board UNSC Cannon Fodder, Slipspace**

I woke up as the cryo pod opened "Good Morning Ensign Elizabeth Reichel, the date is 0650 hours, March 1 2526, standard military calendar" Lupa's voice sounded directly on my head.

I tried to speak but instead just gurgled incoherently.

 _I forgot the stupid bronchial surfactant._

I started regurgitating the surfactant before swallowing it again, making some weird gurgling noises in the meantime.

 _At least it tastes good_

"And the award for most disgusting awakening of the year goes to Ensign Elizabeth Rachel!" Chao said sardonically.

Then Mabel fell on the floor and vomited her surfactant.

"I take back what I said, Mabel definitively gets it"

"Ass" Mabel replied as she cleaned her mouth.

I crouched and got the navy service uniform stored next to the cryo chamber, it was a grey uniform with yellow stripped cuffs, a black stripe of different fabric running down the middle of the torso and a belt.

It fit quite comfortably, I waited while Chao and Mabel got dressed and then we went to the to the sole frigate dining hall, it was quite expansive to compensate for the fact it was the only one, the place was deathly quiet, and not only because most people were just coming out of cryo.

"I've gotta say, did not expect aliens" Chao said.

"Neither did anyone else" I replied while thinking about the aliens, not just one but three alien species, at least.

 _Fascinating._

"Look at the bright side" Mabel said "We get to show those filthy xenos why you don't mess with humanity"

"Did you stumble upon a codex astartes or something Mabel?" Chao asked incredulous.

"I've always believe in the glory of the god emperor my heretic friend"

"Okay, I'm confused, what are you people talking about?" I interrupted their conversation.

"You don't know Warhammer?" They asked at the same time.

"Nope"

"Well that just cannot stand, I'll introduce you to the glory of the emperor after we get to Harvest Liz" Before we could continue Lupa's voice sounded throughout the ship.

"Attention, the ship will be exiting slipspace in thirty minutes, all crew to their battle-stations, readiness rating has been raised to Alpha-2" We got up immediately and headed for the bridge, it was a short walk there.

Alpha-2 was the second highest readiness rating there was, it indicated enemy presence inside a system, all crew should stay at their stations and any marine compliment should head down to their launch bays in case of an evac order.

As the blast doors opened, I could see that the commander and the rest of the bridge crew were already there, I sat on my console and activated it, looking at the status readouts from the weapon sensors.

The weapons were deactivated during slipspace to avoid damage but I could still check our munition reserves and the status of the MAC's capacitor, everything was at a hundred percent capacity, yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that it wouldn't be enough.

"Prepare for Neural synch" The commander said, again a countdown appeared and again all of our minds merged with the frigate's computer, this was the fourth time we had done that and it still was as exciting as the first time.

"Exiting slipspace in ten seconds" Lupa said as she began counting down the seconds until we came back to normal space.

The ship shook as it exited slipspace.

"Ship status, Lupa scan the system" The commander said immediately.

"Fifteen thousand kilometer drift from the UNSC Everest, we're correcting course right now and should restore coherency in ten minutes" Chao said.

"All ships accounted for" Lowell, the communications officer reported from his console.

"All weapons read green" I reported.

"All systems read green, Fusion reactor is functioning at a hundred percent capacity" Mabel reported, the other crewmembers quickly finished their reports and everybody waited intently for the results of the sensor readout that the commander had ordered.

"Scan complete, small number of debris detected a few thousand kilometers from here, large amount of orbital debris on Harvest's geosynchronous orbit, looks like their space tether was destroyed" Lupa started.

"Energy signatures consistent with the report from the Heracles detected over Harvest, looks like a single ship, exactly two kilometers long by one kilometer wide" As she spoke an image of the ship appeared on the main screen, the sleek and bulbous ship had a pinkish purple armor with several dark lines running over it.

"Sir, the Admiral has ordered us to form up on arrowhead formation with the Frigates Sitting Duck and Paper Dodo" Lowell said as the position of the frigates appeared on the main screen as hollow blue diamonds with blue triangles covering their front half and a green point, the other frigates didn't have green points while the cruisers were represented by double parallelograms with a white mark on the bottom representing their engines and destroyers had a blue diamond filled out with white.

The enemy ship was a dark red circle sitting over a line representing Harvest's geosynchronous orbit, she was outside the larger red circle representing our optimal MAC range, which was actually infinite considering there's no friction in space, but beyond a distance the enemy could easily detect and avert it.

"New directives from FLEETCOM, we're to make a parabolic course around Harvest that will intercept the Covenant vessel" He added, a diagram of the system with the Cannon Fodder's course on it appearing on the main screen.

"Ensign Chao, execute course corrections" The commander said.

"Aye aye sir" Chao complied.

The ship accelerated again as it formed up with the Paper Dodo and the Sitting duck and sped towards Harvest.

"What are the rules of engagement?" The commander asked.

"Standard ROE for now, we're awaiting updated directives sir" Lupa replied.

We waited in silence as the blue icons representing the UNSC fleet drew ever closer to the red blip on the map, the tension so thick that I forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

As the fleet finally reached engagement range, Admiral Cole's voice came to all ships and ordered them to fire at will.

"Fire Archer pods A through D, time them to hit a second after our MAC" Holloway ordered.

I quickly calculated a firing solution and sent it to the ship's system, the ship vibrated slightly as the Archers launched and then shook violently as the MAC fired, a simple diagram, showing task force X-Ray and the enemy ship was soon filled by the symbols representing the veritable storm of firepower heading towards the enemy ship.

I opened up a feed to one of the ship's fore cameras and saw the Covenant ship disappear behind the momentary flashes caused by the Archer missile detonations.

Only to come out unscathed and covered by a shimmering blue-gold shield.

The lines crossing the ship's hull suddenly began to grow bright red and out of them came fiery red lasers, they raced through the vacuum between the opposing forces in a split second and hit our ships, melting trough them instantaneously.

But that wasn't everything, several points in the ship started glowing intensely before creating balls of superheated plasma contained inside incredibly powerful magnetic fields, the red balls of flaming death sped through the vacuum, one of them heading directly towards the Cannon Fodder.

"Foreign object heading towards our starboard aft, estimated hit in twenty seconds" Lupa's voice sounded over the bridge.

"Lupa eject heatsinks A1 and A2 immediately" Holloway shouted "Navigations, I want a course correction 125 by 43 degrees, full acceleration, launch active decoy 1 on our original trajectory and reduce our EM signature by twenty percent"

"Aye aye sir" Lupa and Chao answered.

The two red hot cylindrical heatsinks launched away perpendicular to the Cannon Fodder's Starboard and Port sides at high speed as it accelerated towards a new heading.

At the same time a black semi sphere with a diameter of twenty meters headed on the original course, it emitted the same Electromagnetic as the Cannon Fodder in an attempt at confusing the enemy ship as to their exact location.

It didn't work.

"The object has made a course correction, it's tracking us" Lupa said, tension dripping from her voice "Impact in five seconds"

"Goddammit!" Holloway said "activate all starboard emergency boosters, kill our forward acceleration! Reichel! Shoot down that thing!"

The ship's starboard exploded outwards as the emergency boosters violently threw the ship to the port at the same time as the ship's point defense lit up to destroy flaming red ball of plasma heading towards it.

The enemy ordnance corrected its course once again and, ignoring the PD fire hitting it, hit the starboard engine section of the Cannon Fodder, the Plasma melted trough the armor in milliseconds, bleeding trough the aft decks and atomizing anything in its way.

Secondary explosions ripped through the engine section as the fusion drive on the first engine had its hydrogen dust ignite and the ammo reserves for the aft weapons cooked and detonated in brilliant white explosions that lasted fractions of a second before the ship's oxygen was consumed.

The Cannon Fodder was left drifting aimlessly, and violently, in the void of space with a glowing red hole in its starboard aft where its Fusion Drive was supposed to be.

The bridge shook violently during the impact as I closed my eyes and grit my teeth, I could feel the food I had eaten earlier rising up my stomach, but I managed to hold onto it for the moment.

As I opened my eyes I could see the emergency lights activating as the ships struggled to reroute its power systems after losing a sixth of its volume.

The normal lights activated again and I waited for the status report call from the commander, only he wasn't saying anything.

"Commander?" I said as I looked at his chair, he was lying motionless there with blood coming out of his forehead, must have gotten a concussion.

 _Oh bother_

I looked at my screen and called up Lupa, a message appeared saying she was rebooting.

"Who's still up?" I asked, looking over the bridge.

Chao and Mabel we're the only ones to answer.

"What's our status" I asked.

"Communications offline" Mabel answered "So is most of our sensor suite, plus the starboard fusion drive doesn't exist anymore and the port one is heavily damaged"

"I stopped the spinning, but we're not getting anywhere on the secondary drives" Chao said.

Suddenly Lupa materialized again as her reboot finished.

"So what did it miss" She said as her own diagnostics suit started.

"Nothing much, we're just dead in the water and half of the crew is unconscious" Chao replied.

"Indeed" Lupa said thoughtfully "The rest of the ship is not much better"

"Absolutely wonderful" Chao said sarcastically.

"I'm ordering the repair teams to the port drive, maybe we can still salvage it" Mabel said.

"I'm not so… There's another enemy projectile heading towards us, impact in twenty two seconds" Lupa said alarmed.

A diagram showing the Cannon Fodder and the ball of plasma heading towards it appeared on my screen, this time the plasma was heading for our starboard midship, if it hit it would completely destroy the ship.

 _What can I do, what can I do?_

I suddenly remembered one of Cole's engagements with the Belicose, an infamous UNSC ship turned insurrectionist murder machine.

Seeing as they couldn't shoot down the MAC coming towards them they instead hit it with a missile detonation, changing its course so it wouldn't hit them, maybe we couldn't evade the plasma, but we could definitely stop it from hitting our midship.

"Lupa, evacuate everyone in the ship's fore and give me the plasma velocity, response time and turning rate from the last hit"

"Aye aye Ensign" She said as the data suddenly appeared on my console, the plasma was fast approaching, there was no way we could dodge it, but we didn't need to.

 _Let's see, thirty degrees per second turning rate, two and a half kilometers per second relative speed and a response time of a quarter of a second._

"MAC charge?" I shouted as I ran the calculations through my console and armed all the fore port and aft starboard munitions.

"72 percent… it's enough" Lupa said with a curious tone as she finally found out what I was planning.

"Good" I answered as I finished the calculations and a countdown appeared on my screen "Everybody brace, Lupa, fire the MAC and detonate all the primed munition and emergency boosters on my mark!"

The glowing red spot on the bridge screens grew brighter and brighter as the plasma approached and the countdown trickled down to zero.

The ship shook violently as Lupa started my plan before the mark even came out of my mouth.

The Cannon Fodder was thrown back by the MAC shot and the Plasma started to adjust its direction, coming closer and closer to the ship.

However, the ship was spinning counterclockwise on its own axis due to the munition detonations and the fore part of the ship intercepted the plasma.

The ship started shaking even more violently as the plasma melted the ship in half and the remaining munition on the front half of the ship cooked off and detonated.

An expanding cloud of glowing metal formed on the forward view screen, it was a veritable rainbow of bright colors formed by the excited remains of the melted superconductors, armor plates and other material vaporized on impact.

The ship kept spinning uncontrollably, bringing the few sensors that remained intact to bear on a magnificent image, the creation of a sudden star.

"What was that?" Mabel asked, her eyes fixated on the forward viewscreen.

"I believe it was the enemy ship," Lupa said.

"We won! I can't believe it we won!" I shouted as I released the crash harness and got up from seat, then proceeded to empty my stomach's content into the floor.

"Lupa, activate the emergency signal and get a medical team up here, I think we're going to be stuck in this bucket for at least a few hours" Chao said as he also got up from his console.

 **Second Lieutenant Max O'Connor, March 1 2556, On Board UNSC Target Practice, on a geosynchronous orbit of Harvest.**

 _"_ _What time is it?" I asked as the platoon leaders reunited with captain Kazemi, we were all seated around a table at the dining hall, it was absolutely empty save for us and the command staff from the other companies._

 _I was holding a black coffee in my hands with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon sitting in front of me._

 _"_ _0980 hours" Lieutenant Azar Tavana said, she was staring at her datapad, I'd like to believe she was re-reading the briefing, but it was obvious that she was playing a game._

 _"_ _So, what's the situation?" Lieutenant Matsuda asked, he was standing next to me eating out of a cereal bowl._

 _Kazemi took a bite out of his plate, which was identical to mine, and started talking "The navy got its ass kicked" He took another bite._

 _My face dropped when I heard that, we knew from the briefings that there was only supposed to be one ship, so either the Intel report was wrong, or thing were much worse than I thought._

 _"_ _We lost thirteen ships to a single enemy ship" My jaw dropped._

 _"_ _Still, we blew it up a couple hours ago, it's floating debris now" He tapped a button on a datapad next to him and a holographic image of Harvest appeared over it._

 _"_ _Scans found evidence of a Covenant encampment, and that's their official designation now, on the southern hemisphere some twenty kilometers from the city of New Flen and next to the Bifrost escarpment" the image zoomed in to the area, it was covered in fields of wheat and the occasional splotch of green from forests._

 _"_ _We tried contacting them but they didn't respond to any hails" A red circle appeared on the image denoting the area where enemy presence was detected._

 _"_ _All orbital objects within fifty thousand kilometers from the encampment have been destroyed by a high powered laser, this includes our reconnaissance satellites, fortunately we've managed to get some good Intel from the scout drones we launched before we lost contact with them"_

 _Several purple structures appeared on the hologram, some hug the ground while others looked like spires, which rose out of the ground and emitted blue fields, they were all clustered together near a forest._

 _"_ _Enemy force is estimated at divisional strength, command tried to destroy them from orbit but the laser is powerful enough to cripple if not destroy anything we send at them, it also managed to melt a MAC round out of the sky before it hit them"_

 _"_ _So they're sending us to take them out" Mallory stated dryly._

 _"_ _Correct, our accompanying ODST battalion will be airdropped into the forest next to the covenant base in order to disrupt enemy activity and take out any anti air capacity they have, then retreat back into the forest" a blue zone appeared on the image denoting the ODST's mission area._

 _"_ _Then the 1009_ _th_ _Armored Cavalry regiment plus all of the Division's heavy artillery will be deployed in a large semi-circle to the east of the encampment, near the Bifrost escarpment" he paused as blue icons representing our forces appeared on the hologram._

 _"_ _They will then proceed to attack the enemy base with heavy air support, their objective is to drive the enemy from the base to the city of New Flen were the rest of the 227_ _th_ _will be deployed, we will encircle the enemy there and force them to surrender"_

 _"_ _Which comes to us" The image zoomed again into a boulevard in the edge of the city; it was flanked by several low-rise office and commercial buildings._

 _"_ _We will be holding the sunflower boulevard, it leads directly to the heart of the city and, as such, it's absolutely essential that we hold it"_

 _"_ _First platoon…" Kazemi looked at Azar "Will hold the actual boulevard, the 537_ _th_ _engineers will help you fortify the streets"_

 _"_ _Right" Azar said as she started tapping away at her datapad, studying the boulevard and formulating a plan for the future engagement._

 _"_ _Second platoon will hold the right flank while third platoon will hold the left" Batou and I nodded simultaneously._

 _"_ _Fourth platoon, meanwhile, will be placed at the MagLev station a few hundred meters down the boulevard, Mallory you'll be in charge of the company mortars and the battalion's adjunct medical unit, fortify the station in case we need to fall back"_

 _"_ _Yes sir" She said as she started taking notes on her datapad._

 _"_ _We'll get priority access to some heavy artillery and air support, however all the tanks will be used to drive the enemy from its base so we can only rely on our cougars and the brigade's warthogs for vehicle support"_

 _"_ _Any questions?" Kazemi finished._

 _"_ _Yeah, who's buying the first drink when we're done?" Batou asked with a smile on his face._

 _"_ _You ask you buy" I replied humorously, the rest of the group agreed much to Batou's chagrin._

 **Lance Corporal Katya Alexandrova, March 1 2526, UNSC Target Practice's Loading Bay B-6**

 _I could hear the muffled roar of the osprey's engines trough the grizzly's amour,_ _it was 0130 hours and we were about to launch from the Target Practice._

 _"_ _Weapon status?" Sergeant Alice asked from the front right of the tank._

 _"_ _120s are locked and loaded" I started reading the status readouts on my console "M247T is green, so are the Echidna MLRS and Aurum ATGM"_

 _"_ _Good" She tapped a button on her main screen indicating that our tank was ready to go._

 _"_ _All hands, brace for launch" I could hear Minerva, the division's AI voice over the intercom._

 _The tank shook as the pelican carrying it lifted and suddenly gravity went out, my medallion shot up in the air as the osprey accelerated towards Harvest's atmosphere._

 _I switched to the osprey's forward camera, watching as the majestic green and blue ball that was harvest filled the horizon._

 _The green and blue were soon met by fiery red and violent shaking as the osprey descended into Harvest's atmosphere._

 _The fire and shaking soon stopped and I started to notice the details on the terrain, it was beautiful, rolling hills covered in wheat from the fields on one side of the Bifrost, and on the other the golden yellow of sunflower plantations used to fuel the biopolymer factories to the south._

 _And smack right in the middle of my vision was a splotch of purple and blue, the enemy encampment looked beautiful from up here, I doubted it would look that good from down there, in the middle of a battle._

 _Explosions filled the sky as the remaining covenant anti-air batteries did everything they could to swat us out of the sky._

 _"_ _Touchdown in thirty seconds" The pilot's voice came over the intercom, I was swaying around as the osprey executed evasive maneuvers._

 _The shaking stopped as the osprey landed behind a hill, the four tanks in its loading bay quickly moved out and spread in a diamond formation behind it._

 _I switched to my Grizzly's sensor feed and started scanning the environment._

 _Mister Pickles was surrounded by wheat in every which way except up, the sky was filled with Bright blue and yellow explosions as some of our pelicans and osprey's were shot out of the sky, at the same time some columns of smoke could be seen rising up into the sky to our north, we're the enemy base was located._

 _"_ _Alright everyone, let's roll up wing formation, high spread" Lieutenant Kawasaki's voice came over the intercom as other dropships started landing and disembarking their vehicles._

 _We joined the rest of the tank platoon, keeping a hundred meters from each other and maintaining a formation that looked like an inverted V._

 _As we rolled up the hill we were joined by more squads of grizzlies, cobras, wolverines, warthogs and the occasional Gremlin and Elephant, the later which were setting down and preparing to serve as either repair stations, medical platforms or munition storage for the regiment._

 _"_ _Whoa" Alice said as we climbed up the hill and started seeing the enemy base, it was a gigantic concentration of tall spires surrounded by smaller buildings that hugged the ground, fortunately there were still plenty of hills that could provide us cover._

 _Suddenly glowing blue purple spheres of plasma started arcing towards us._

 _"_ _Accelerate! Get us out of here!" Alice shouted._

 _The tank jumped forward as one of the balls of plasma detonated some thirty meters behind it, melting a hole into the ground and incinerating the nearby wheat stalks._

 _Our Rhinos responded rapidly, showering the enemy position with retaliatory strikes and dropping a smokescreen over the entire advancing force._

 _Flashes of blue and yellow shone through the smoke as the plasma artillery kept hitting our approximate position._

 _"_ _How far are we?" Takei asked as the tank shook from the nearby explosions._

 _"_ _Three Kilometers from effective range!" Alice shouted._

 _"_ _Loading APFSDS rounds" I said as the armor piercing shells were loaded onto their chambers._

 _"_ _Coming out of smoke screen in ten seconds" Joshua stated._

 _The smoke quickly dissipated as we moved out of its area of effect._

 _I could now see the enemy base again, only it was much, much closer, though still some three kilometers away, still it had finally come within our weapons effective range._

 _I aimed Mr. Pickles turret towards the base but before I could fire anything Alice alerted me to the presence of an enemy tank some 300 meters from us._

 _I swiveled the turret to face the purple beetle like vehicle that the battlenet identified as a Type-26 Wraith, it was ignoring us and firing those balls of plasma towards the smoke screen._

 _"_ _Blue-1 fire!" I said as I fired an APSFDS round from the tank's first 120mm gun._

 _The round crossed the distance between the Grizzly and the Wraith in a second, the round hit the purple side armor, and was deflected, burying itself into the ground next to the wraith._

 _"_ _What?" Joshua exclaimed in disbelief as he saw what happened, APSFDS rounds weren't supposed to do that._

 _"_ _Blue-2 fire" The round hit the Wraith's armor at a ninety-degree angle and wasn't reflected, but it didn't penetrate either, just leaving a small hole in the armor were the shell hit._

 _"_ _Fuck! Fire the ATGM!" Alice ordered while the wraith repositioned to target us, I started to notice this same scene happening all throughout the smoke screen as more UNSC vehicles left the cover to meet various covenant vehicles._

 _"_ _Red-1 Fire" the Aurum missile flew towards the enemy tank in the blink of an eye, but before it could actually hit its target, a blue laser flew out of the wraith and detonated the ATGM in midair._

 _The wraith aimed towards our tank and fired its cannon._

 _"_ _Reverse, reverse!" Alice shouted as the ball of plasma arced towards us._

 _The plasma landed some twelve meters ahead of us, heating up the armor until its edges started glowing and throwing the grizzly backwards._

 _I switched the 120 ammo to_ High Power Microwave Enhanced Shells, the HPMES shells were the most destructive shells available to _a normal UNSC grizzly, unfortunately we only had four of those rounds in storage._

 _"_ _Blue-1 Fire" The shell sped towards the wraith and hit its front armor, disintegrating it in a blue flash, the wraith sped towards us with a gaping hole in its front._

 _Small green bolts of plasma started flying from two appendages in the wraith's fore, slamming into our front armor and melting into it bit by bit._

 _"_ _Blue-2 Fire" The wraith exploded in a bright blue as the second shell shot through the whole and detonated inside the tank._

 _"_ _Status report" Gunny sergeant Jules, our squad leader, asked as his tank came out of its own duel._

 _"_ _Beta's Fine" Sergeant Oliwia from our squad's second tank, Beta, answered._

 _"_ _Pickles is good to go" Alice reported into the squadcom._

 _"_ _Annihilator here, our front armor is damaged but we're still operational, be advised, APFSDS is ineffective against enemy armor" Sergeant Becker alerted._

 _"_ _I think we all found that out thanks" Oliwia answered._

 _"_ _They also have anti-missile lasers" I said over the squadcom._

 _"_ _Alright squad, join up diamond formation" We cut our distance to fifty meters from each other with Annihilator staying on the back, the rest of the squads on the platoon were doing the same thing in order to concentrate firepower on the enemy tanks._

 _Hundreds of enemy vehicles sped out of the enemy base to meet our own advancing force; several cobras locked down and started firing their more powerful 105mm railguns at the advancing force, they were super effective as the enemy vehicles fell against single shots from the supersonic rounds._

 _The nearby wolverines added their own fire to the Rhinos and Foxes artillery barrage as they fired their Argent V missiles at the enemy force; this was added by coordinated ATGM fire from the grizzlies and warthogs plus the air support that managed to punch through the Covenant's anti-air defenses._

 _Still, a good part of the enemy force, composed of vehicles identified as Wraiths, Ghosts and Locusts, the latter two of which we had not met yet, survived and retaliated, destroying dozens of UNSC vehicles with their awesome firepower._

 _Several broadswords flew perpendicular to enemy advance, dropping a storm of powerful bombs which took out dozens of additional vehicles in a storm of explosions, however, several enemy flyers, identified as either the smaller Banshees or the larger Seraphs, flew out of the enemy base and started shooting down our own air support._

 _The UNSC replied with several Longsword, Wombat drone and SkyHawk wings that swatted several enemy flyers out of the air._

 _We accelerated forward, accompanied by the other UNSC ground forces and by Hornets and Vultures in the sky._

 _"_ _Alice, save up on the HPMES rounds, load one in blue-1 and a High Explosive_ Heptanitrocubane Boosted round on Blue-2" Alice ordered as she scanned the battlefield readouts.

"Yes ma'am" Alice highlighted a wraith some twelve hundred meters from us, I aimed at it, shot the HPMES round and then the HEHB.

The first round hit at a shallow angle and managed to crack the armor but didn't actually destroy it, fortunately the second blew it off and damaged the Wraith, unfortunately it still managed to fire, vaporizing a gauss hog that was hit by its plasma.

I reloaded Blue-2 and fired again; the shell went through the unarmored part of the wraith and detonated inside, blowing it up.

"They're not so though after all" I said with a smirk as I watched the blue flames emerge from the wraith carcass"

Suddenly one of the four-legged walkers identified as locusts shot a beam of purple plasma at us hitting the ATGM launcher and melting it off the turret.

"You just had to open your mouth" Joshua complained as I rotated the turret and fired the HPMES.

The shell detonated harmlessly against a barrier of transparent blue hexagons.

"Shields!" I shouted cursing myself internally for wasting my last microwave round.

The locust's cannon started glowing but before it managed to fire again the explosion from a rhino's 182mm howitzer enveloped it.

The smoke cleared, showing a damaged locust leaking some kind of green liquid, most likely coolant, struggling to stand on its damaged legs.

"Blue-2 Fire!" The Locust exploded as the high explosive shell hit it.

"Loading APFSDS on blue-1," I said as we approached the base.

A wombat flew past us, shooting a missile at one of the covenant spires, it blew up a structural beam causing the spire to fall down, hitting another spire and destroying it, the wombat however was shot down by some anti air cannon inside the base perimeter.

"Be advised, the shields emitted by some spires has an EMP effect, do not enter when enemy forces are nearby" Minerva said trough the intercom.

Two of the smaller ghosts started harassing us; they had open canopies so I managed to take them out with the machine gun, that was fortunate because we were spending a lot of 120mm ammo.

Our squad finally entered the base perimeter with us on the front, we were soon joined by a cobra, a wolverine and two gauss hogs, fires were burning all throughout the base but the infantry didn't seem to be anywhere near, in fact, the base was eerily empty.

"Sergeant Jules" Colonel Hasan's voice sounded through the intercom.

"Sir?" The sergeant sounded anxious, it wasn't every day that the regiment's CO talked to you directly.

"Your group has been the one to advance the most into the enemy base, as you may have noticed enemy resistance inside the base is very light, I want you to find out why, the largest shield is some five hundred meters to your west, I want you to go there and find out what's under it"

"I'm sending you additional reinforcements and air support, Hasan out"

"Uhhh… yes sir" Jules answered.

Two hornets started escorting us as we moved through the base, the roar of battle could still be heard but the area around us was strangely quiet.

We maneuvered around some kind of barracks, there was an entrance to an underground tunnel that seemed to lead into the shield some three hundred meters in front of us but it was heavily fortified and protected by several vehicles.

The Hornets started firing at the enemy fortifications pinning them down on their bunkers meanwhile we engaged the vehicles.

The cobra locked down and shot at one the two wraith facing us, the wraith blew up in a brilliant explosion and sent what looked like a cylinder of plasma flying into an enemy turret, blowing it up.

"Pickles, this is beta, we'll crack the second wraith's armor, finish it off" Oliwia stated.

"Roger that" I said as I aimed the 120s towards the wraith, Beta shot two HEHBs at the wraith, cracking part of its front armor as it shot at the cobra, vaporizing it.

"Blue-2 fire!" I blew the wraith's armor off.

"Blue-1 fire!" The armor-piercing round hit something critical and the wraith fell down, depowered, a saurian like alien in blue armor exited the tank before I cut him down with my machine gun.

"Be advised, new alien species detected" Alice reported to command.

I turned my turret towards the enemy fortifications, there was a trio of jackals standing on top of a floating platform "Blue-2 fire" There were no jackals standing on top of a floating platform anymore.

We quickly mopped up the rest of the enemy forces at the cost of one warthog and another hornet and started driving into the subterranean entrance, as soon as we entered we lost radio contact.

"Do they have some kind of purple fetish?" Joshua asked as our vehicles rolled through the passageway, there were a few aliens here but they were quickly disposed of, there were also some parked vehicles under maintenance, I marked them so a recovery team could acquire them later.

As we exited the other side my heart sank, we found the rest of the enemy forces, there were over a thousand alien craft, most of them hovering over the ground and carrying some kind of vehicle, the ones that were still on the ground were being loaded up with infantry and additional vehicles.

"They're going to attack New Flen" I said.

"That's good right? That was our plan?" The gunner from the remaining warthog said over the coms.

"The plan was for a routing and disorganized force to be intercepted by the rest of the division on New Flen, not for them to be attacked by an organized force and motivated enemy force" Takei answered.

"We have to warn the Division" Jules said "Everybody back now, we have to restore a communications link"

Joshua stepped on the pedal, we quickly came back to the other side of the entrance, Lieutenant Kazemi, and the rest of our platoon was there, interestingly there was also an ODST squad there.

"Be advised, the main shield is hiding a staging area, the Covenant is going to attack New Flen!" Jules shouted over the division's com channel.

"Acknow…" Before Colonel Hasan could order anything a huge whine sounded throughout the battlefield, a wave of bright blue spread from the center of the enemy base, deactivating our tank and downing coms.

"Shit" Joshua said as he opened the grizzly's hatch to check outside, I grabbed my rifle and followed him out of the vehicle.

The hornet had landed safely on the ground and its pilots were trying to restart it, it seemed that the other vehicles had also shut down as some of the crew exited to check its status.

I could see lieutenant Kazemi standing on top of his tank, he was pinching his nose with an annoyed expression while looking towards the shield "Bollocks" was all he said.

I looked at the direction he was staring to see the enemy aircraft speeding towards New Flen.

Sorry for the delay, I was to busy, and lazy, to actually write, anyway, I managed to finish the first half of this chapter and here it is.

I'll be Revising the first chapter once I finish this one, also, assume all visuals are from Halo 2 Anniversary, because that game was absolutely beautiful.

Also, for cannonfodder43 ( Thanks for reviewing!) according to The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston J. Cole the existence of the Covenant was a secret until at least 2527, plus I wanted to convey the impression of a panicking UNSC HIGHCOM rushing to meet the threat posed by a previously unknown alien empire, and as for the cyborgs, I had just finished rewatching GiTS :), they won't appear that much in the story but I just though it was a nice way to flesh out the Halo verse.

If anyone knows a good beta that would be willing to proofread this story please tell me.


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